E-Learning:
Oct. 28th 2000
By Paul Stacey
Leaders of organizations are
beginning to realize that their ability to compete and be successful depends on
the knowledge of their people, their ability to create that knowledge, share it,
leverage it and apply it more innovatively and faster than their competitors.
Verna
Allee, President, Integral Performance Group
(This
quote was excerpted from a RealPlayer video clip of
Verna Allee speaking on Knowledge Management. The video
clip and other great resources can be found at
click2learn's e-Learning Insights site at the bottom of
the following page: http://home.click2learn.com/broadcast/resources.html)
Some
organizations, especially consulting firms, have been
pursuing knowledge management strategies for several
years. Within the enterprise, knowledge management is
unfolding on a separate but parallel track to
e-learning.
What
is knowledge management? How do knowledge management and
e-learning intersect? Lets take a look.
Why
Knowledge Management?
The
rationale for knowledge management is compelling.
Information
technology has enabled organizations to re-engineer the
way they operate. New infrastructures allow
organizations to take advantage of the transactional and
communication capabilities information technology
provides.
As
these new capabilities are tapped the need for knowledge
management has emerged in a number of ways:
- The new
economy thrives on producing information and passing
it at unprecedented rates among partners, employees,
and customers. As the size and complexity of the
enterprise increases the volume of information
increases and becomes fragmented. The sheer volume
of data and information can be overwhelming. The
need to identify the important pieces that enable
effective action in the interest of the enterprise
becomes critical. Information needs to be distilled
into knowledge. Turning information and data into
knowledge enables effective action.
- A major element of the
enterprise's intellectual capital is its people.
Knowledge management puts in place processes and
systems to ensure it retains knowledge assets even
when expertise leaves. Lessons learned and best
practices become accessible and transferable
throughout the organization. Without a knowledge
management system staff spend large amounts of time
reinventing the wheel and often repeating past
mistakes. Knowledge management enables the
enterprise to maintain, develop, and distribute the
knowledge expertise of its people.
- Knowledge management
enables the organization to quickly get partners up
to speed on its products, processes, and
requirements and vice versa. Knowledge management
facilitates ease of partnering.
- Reacting quickly to
new opportunities requires the enterprise to
distribute decision-making authority (and the
competencies to do so). Organizations pursuing
knowledge management are building a collaborative
culture that moves away from traditional knowledge
hoarding to a new culture of knowledge sharing.
Knowledge management is an integral part of the new
collaborative culture allowing for decentralized
decision making and trust that the right decisions
will be made.
- A large part of the
value add in high tech companies is created by
knowledge-based services such as product and system
design, research and development, market
intelligence, customer contact and relationship
management, distribution, and brand management.
Knowledge management systems define and provide
access to these knowledge-based services and sustain
their value by keeping them current.
What
is Knowledge?
Knowledge
is commonly distinguished from data and information.
Data represents facts often in the form of measurements.
Information places data within a meaningful context.
Knowledge
is an understanding of information acquired by study,
investigation, observation, or experience. A tactical
definition of knowledge is the ability to turn
information and data into effective action. In this
sense "managing knowledge" means delivering
the understanding of information and data people need to
be effective in their jobs. Knowledge can be viewed both
as a thing to shared and as an applied process. As a
practical matter organizations need to manage knowledge
both as an object and as a process.
It
helps to think of the relationship between data,
information, and knowledge as a pyramid where data forms
the foundation, information forms the middle section,
and knowledge resides at the top. In terms of volume,
data takes up the most space, information takes up a
little less, and knowledge forms the small portion at
the top.
Extracting
knowledge involves interpreting volumes of data and
information to arrive at concepts and guidelines that
can be documented, packaged and delivered to employees,
partners, customers, and suppliers who need them.
Knowledge
can be tacit or explicit.
Tacit
knowledge is subconsciously understood and applied,
difficult to articulate, developed from direct
experience and action, and usually shared through highly
interactive conversation, storytelling and shared
experience.
Explicit
knowledge is consciously understood and can be more
precisely and formally articulated. Explicit knowledge
is readily codified, documented, transferred and shared.
Explicit
knowledge can be of several types:
- knowledge about something - concepts,
categories, descriptors (declarative knowledge)
- knowledge of how something occurs or is
performed (procedural knowledge)
- knowledge why something occurs (causal
knowledge)
Knowledge
management is particularly challenged in attempting to explicate, share, and
leverage tacit knowledge.
Knowledge that has not been articulated represents a
lost opportunity to share and leverage that knowledge. If competitors have
articulated and shared similar knowledge throughout their organization, they may
obtain competitive advantage.
Implementing
Knowledge Management
Implementations
of knowledge management focus on four main aspects:
- People: To support knowledge management the
enterprise needs to define who its knowledge users, knowledge authors and
knowledge analysts are.
- Culture: Creating an organization that shares
knowledge rather than hoards knowledge is a big change. Organizational
status, power, and success based on collective sharing of knowledge as
opposed to knowledge sharing on a "need to know" basis is major.
If people don't want to share, they are not going to do it even if you have
the best technology in the world. People won't share if they don't see
what's in it for them. Changes in performance and incentive systems may be
necessary to create a culture where knowledge sharing is the norm. It will
be necessary to develop measurements that track knowledge contributions,
development and re-use.
- Content: Creating and managing data,
information, and knowledge important to the success of the enterprise is at
the heart of knowledge management. Knowledge management goes significantly
beyond storage and retrieval. Knowledge management involves extracting
meaning/understanding out of data/information and then sharing/distributing
it.
- Technology: The technical infrastructure that
enables the capture, storage, and delivery of content to those who need it,
when they need it. Technology is an enabler not the solution. From a
technical infrastructure point of view knowledge management goes beyond
storage and retrieval to include systems for collaboration & sharing
along with push technologies that don't require users to pull from a data
repository but rather broadcast knowledge on a daily basis
Knowledge
management is far easier to understand than to
implement. The biggest challenge is not the strategy or
technology but the cultural change.
Knowledge
Management Providers
If
you want to explore and learn more about knowledge
management check out Knowledge Management World at http://www.kmworld.com
If
you want to explore a real knowledge management
marketplace go to my personal favourite, Vancouver's
very own Knexa http://www.knexa.com.
Knexa is the world's first dynamically priced
eMarketplace for digital knowledge. You can buy and sell
knowledge directly at Knexa and even become a Knowledge
Agent!
Companies
providing knowledge management technologies include:
Tacit
- http://www.tacit.com.
Tacit's Knowledge Mail transforms your enterprise e-mail
system into a fully automated knowledge discovery and
exchange centre.
Autonomy
- http://www.autonomy.com.
Autonomy's technology solutions automatically read,
categorize, hyperlink and personalize internal and
external information including documents, presentations,
articles and web pages.
There
are lots of others but this will get you started.
E-Learning
and Knowledge Management
There
are several commonalties between e-learning and
knowledge management. Both deal with knowledge exchange
and creating communities where knowledge is shared.
Recent
developments in the e-learning space point to another
point of intersection between e-learning and knowledge
management - learning object repositories.
Learning
objects are discrete chunks of reusable online learning
resources. A learning objects or knowledge element as it
is sometimes called can be an applet, animation,
streaming audio/video or other form of online content.
The benefit of a learning object rests in the principle
of "develop once, use many" such that the same
learning object can be linked and appropriately used in
multiple places. When a change is made to a learning
object all places linked to it are updated instantly.
Creating
central repositories of reusable learning objects using
object oriented design and metadata has been an
aspiration for some time. Several providers are now
doing just that and positioning the resulting capability
as serving the needs of both e-learning and knowledge
management.
Generation
21 http://www.gen21.com
claims to have the only fully integrated solution to
training and knowledge management. Generation 21's Total
Knowledge Management (TKM) system uses Dynamic Learning
Object technology to integrate learning, knowledge
management, and performance support. Using TKM you
author knowledge or learning objects and store them in a
relational database that's accessible enterprise-wide.
Peer3
http://www.peer3.com
thinks of itself as a knowledge management software
company focused on people, knowledge and learning. It
recently won the "Extraordinary Products
Award" at Online Learning 2000. Peer3 software
incorporates knowledge management and e-learning
technologies including the capability for content
management, reusable objects, XML (extensible markup
language) data format, and metadata tagging.
XML
and metadata are emerging as key technologies for
e-learning and will be explored in future columns.
Knowledge
management and e-learning two sides of the same coin?
Paul
Stacey is the Director of Corporate Education and
Training at the Technical University of British
Columbia, a long time education professional in the high
tech private sector, and an e-learner.
Contact: Paul
Stacey
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